


Autumn Constellations

by matrixrefugee



Category: Firefly
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-08 03:46:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17973860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matrixrefugee/pseuds/matrixrefugee
Summary: Set during "Out of Gas" - Simon tries to distract himself from the grimness of their situation...





	Autumn Constellations

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/profile)[fic_promptly](http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/)'s [Firefly/Serenity, River, time measurement based on solar cycles](http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/17423.html?thread=884751#cmt884751). Set during "Out of Gas".

Hunkered down in the shuttle with Wash, Zoe and River, Simon had to distract himself from the crisis at hand, the blackness around them, the possibility that they might not find civilization or at least a passing ship before the air recyclers gave out. Zoe was stable at least and resting: she needed her space to heal.

His birthday: they'd been doing something normal and home-like before the blast that forced them to abandon the ship and its captain. Celebrating his birthday. The way they would have if he was back on Osiris with his family. Right now, River and the ragtag bunch that comprised the crew and passengers was all the family he had, and Serenity the only home they had.

Was the only home they had.

He shook his head, trying to clear out the recent memories that had put them in this situation.

He let his mind wander back to Osiris: as much as he could no longer call the Core Worlds home, it still had been home and there were still good memories of it: the maple trees in the courtyard garden turning shades of scarlet and crimson before shedding the leaves which River collected and put in vases to decorate the house, the air turning crisp and cold, the chanting and the music drifting up to the house from the plaza in the valley below where a festival for the spirits of one ancestors was being celebrated, the lights of the jack o'lanterns River insisted on carving even though she claimed there were no such things as ghosts for it to scare off.

Autumn, a time for tragedy, according to his literature class, and here they were in the middle of a crisis with a very uncertain resolution, with many indicators pointing toward a dark ending.

"No autumn in the black," he heard River say. Her voice brought him back to the present. "No single sun out here: so many suns. Measuring time by solar cycles isn't practical. Pure measurement is better. Can't complicate things by using too many suns or suns that don't apply.

"Can't give back the All Hallows' Eve treats you took from me," she added.

He was about to question this non-sequitor, but this was River: things made sense to her even if they didn't make sense to him immediately. Or she could be distracting him from the tension in front of them with a memory of her own, if she'd figured out what he was doing to settle his jangling nerves. She worked by her own kind of sense.


End file.
